If you’re a breadmaker, make some stiff bread dough. If you’re not, buy some frozen from the market, or get some pizza dough in the prepared foods section.
Brown up some onions.
Press out some of the dough into a disk, and put a stick of the kielbasa into it (I cut them into hotdog lengths). Add onions, then wrap the dough around it, and seal completely.
Take a large piece of aluminum foil, and grease very well (more is better here, it “fries” the dough). Put the dough-covered-sausage in the middle, and very loosely roll it up. You want to leave plenty of room to let the dough rise.
Cook in a 350F oven for 30-45 minutes (tap them until they have a hollow sound). Or cook them on a low grill outside, turning regularly for about the same time. (I often do this around the campfire when camping.) Let rest 20 minutes or so.
Cut, and squirt a healthy bit of good mustard inside. Enjoy.
My orthography is quite correct in all cases, because they are all pronounced in English.
But it’s not a generic term to our region, I defer to my local American Butchershop, meat markets, and Union Meatcutters… and pretty much every supermarket around… I go to any local butcher and in the fresh meat section there is invariably a display of fresh, white, Polish Sausage simply labeled “Kielbasa”, same as it ever was… then a bit down the line near the commercial lunchmeat is mass produced “Smoked Polish Sausage” or “Polska Kielbasa” that has its roots in the Chicago Mass Meat Packing Industry and generic sausage. I’ve always wondered what is the difference between the Beef Smoked Sausage and Polska Kielbasa that are placed side by side, besides the animal? They both are cheap and equally not very good.
Man, I understand and get what you are saying, but the term “Kielbasa” has assumed a very specific meaning in American English not dissimilar to “Bratwurst”… just as kielbasa means sausage generically in Polish, Bratwurst is also a very generic term in German for “Roast(ing) Sausage”… in Germany there are as many different versions as regions and even some smoked varieties (Thuringian Bratwurst, Nurnberger, Berliner, etc…).
However, here in America, “Bratwurst” has a very specific connotation and leads to a specific expectation of fresh white German Sausage at most Butchers. Just as “Kielbasa” leads me to think of fresh white Polish sausage, which I expect is a regional expectation as instilled by local or regional Butchershop traditions. Don’t blame me, that when I hear “kielbasa” I don’t immediately think of smoked sausage from Chicago, blame my local meatcutters traditions and naming conventions… It is also not apparent to me that most Americans think of “Kielbasa” as smoked sausage, as I have seen fresh Kielbasa simply labeled as “Kielbasa” in other places besides NW Ohio. I would bet that in many places if you called a local meat market or Butcher and asked if they had Kielbasa, the expectation and assumption would be of the fresh white variety… or they would ask you “Which kind, fresh or smoked?”
Yes. It has. And it seems we agree the American English meaning is a type of smoked sausage. I just don’t understand why you insist in associating it with Chicago. Kielbasa here can be smoked or unsmoked, just like over there.
Oh, and I know I’m going to regret pointing this out, but Thuringer Rostbratwurst, in experience, is not smoked.
I should clarify this before it turns into another crazy linguistic and culinary debate. What I know as a Thuringer Rostbratwurst sold in various parts of Germany, particularly in Thuringia, is this guy here. It’s usually a pork sausage flavored with caraway, marjoram, salt, and pepper, (I also add a bit of mace to mine), stuffed into sheep casings. You can read more about it here, too. Yes, there is a smoked variety that exists, but it’s not the common one, in my experience, in Germany.
The American variety known as a “Thuringer” is a smoked and cured sausage, not unlike a smoked Polish kielbasa. I’m not entirely sure what the connection is with Thuringer rostbratwurst, but I assume there must be some regional connection.
I don’t know, who are these “most people”? Where are they? Who are they?
Go to your local butchershop and ask for “kielbasa” see what they give ya, then stand in the place where you are, now face North, think about direction and why you haven’t now…
I misunderstood you on the Thuringer. I thought you were pointing it out as a smoked variety, rather than a general regional variation of bratwurst. My bad on that.
As for disagreeing about what “kielbasa” means in Polish, you’re simply incorrect if you’re saying it only means fresh sausage. Trust me on this. I’ve been to Poland at least eight times, speak the language, and spent at least a year total there. I’m not lying to you on this point. Look at the Polish Wikipedia page on kielbasa. You don’t have to speak Polish to understand it. See that picture of the smoked sausage on the grill? Notice the caption? “Kielbasa na grillu.” (“Sausage on the grill.”) “Kielbasa” on its own can refer to smoked or fresh varieties.
Sure it does,
kielbasa is actually a corruption of the turkish “kull basti” which pretty much means “grilled sausage”, the same as “bratwurst”. To me, in gastronomic terms, this infers at its root and origin a fresh sausage product as the classic and standard- not a smoked sausage.
That’s all fine and dandy, dude, (and it’s kül bastï, to be precise–and the etymology is unclear at that. It might come from the Hebrew kolbasar, meaning “all kinds of meat.”) but that doesn’t square with your assertion that “kielbasa as a standalone refers to fresh Sausage.” It does not mean anything of the sort. It simply means “sausage,” regardless of its ultimate etymology, and whether the sausage is smoked or fresh is context dependent. It makes no difference what the word in Turkish or Hebrew means, that’s not what it means in Polish, and it means still a different thing in most parts of the US.
Can we just let this drop now? We have enough info out there for folks to come to their own conclusion. And I venture to guess that me and you are the only ones who give a shit at all about this.
With a couple of small alterations (I used regular old potatoes instead of red-skin, and used only one apple because it was huge, and made half a recipe because I’m only feeding two people), I’m serving this tonight.
I will post later and let y’all know what we thought!
